I’ll do my best not to get too silly dealing with this story because at the end of the day, this involves a rather serious aspect of the behavior of some of those close to the President. Had I been writing a piece for my university paper nearly 40 years ago, the jokes that would have arisen … ok let’s stay on track.

Jeff Bezos is a few years younger than me and with a net worth over a 100 billion times my own. Ok, maybe not quite that little (from my perspective) but close. And he’s in the middle of a scandalous accusation that he himself has levelled against American Media Inc. run by David Pecker in conjunction with owner-founder Roger Altman (although because of changes in the corporate structure it’s hard to tell exactly what the role played by Altman, who has a past in politics and is a hedge-fund owner-manager, currently is).

Bezos claims that in an email from AMI deputy general counsel Jon Fine, the company demanded he agree to claim that the media group’s (National Enquirer is one of many media properties they own) coverage of Bezos’ affair with Lauren Sanchez was not politically motivated. And reportedly in another email sent this past Tuesday by AMI’s chief content officer Dylan Howard, AMI threatened that if he didn’t agree to their demands, they would publish nude or semi-nude and suggestive selfies exchanged between Bezos and Sanchez.

The selfies – thanks to the New York Post’s jumping in face-first into the muck and gleefully reporting on the actual pictures, courtesy of a story by Ruth Brown – have been described in cringe-worthy detail. They are not quite explicit, more like the pictures that sank Anthony Weiner and landed him in jail.

They are also none of our business, except now they are. And Bezos has made the right move here while AMI are left looking like some yesteryear thuggish goons. Bezos is fine with being embarrassed by what appears to be fairly moderate and rather normal by today’s standards sexting between consenting (not to mention middle-aged) adults. The more important point is the disgusting threat of blackmail by AMI.

Look, Bezos’ Washington Post has actively worked to further the cause of impeachment against an elected sitting President. An impeachment that may be and may have been part of a deliberate campaign to prevent Trump from reaching the White House, and to quickly remove him once he got there. But by doing this goon job on Bezos, AMI has done a couple of really frickin’ stupid things:

Turned a powerful billionaire with powerful media properties into a martyr-like champion for freedom from harassment and a brave victim of blackmail.

Added credence to the theory that AMI has been Trump’s dirty-tricks media operation, even though this has nothing to do with charges of Russian collusion. As a NeverTrump narrative, it is a deadly weapon. In other words, if they did this, what else have they done for Trump? Which will be the narrative coming out of this, to be gladly and widely promoted by most of the media.

Thrown a wrench into the Mueller and SDNY probes with unpredictable outcomes should SDNY prosecutors decide to file new charges against AMI for what clearly is an attempt at blackmail. Last December, AMI signed a cooperating agreement with SDNY prosecutors over the investigation into the payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in order to bury their kiss and tell stories. This will either feed conspiracy theories or result in some further action by prosecutors that puts AMI in an even tighter spot in order to pressure them to reveal any possible other dirt they may have on anyone possibly related to President Trump. With the objective of laying charges of campaign finance misdeeds. Maybe on members of the inaugural committee?

So, security consultant De Becker snooped on Pecker’s peeping into Bezos’ affairs. From a moral and cultural perspective, this doesn’t even rise to the level of a second-rate Mexican Soap Opera, but astonishingly, it may have ramifications that impact any future attempt to impeach or at least to thoroughly embarrass President Trump. Pecker and his thuggish lawyers seem to have gotten a great head start on that already.

AMI may end up being the ones who, in fact, do the most damage to Trump after all is done and settled a few years from now.